The Future of Pleasure
Beyond the future of sex, will the future hold higher levels of pleasure for us?
Sex is about many things, but at the very center of it is pleasure.
Which raises the question: going beyond just the future of sex, what is the future of pleasure?
We experience pleasure from each of our senses: touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell.
We also experience intellectual and spiritual pleasure, often stimulated through our senses.
There are different levels of pleasure: from the mundane to ecstasies available only to those who have trained their capacities.
I sometimes refer to ‘the age of discernment’. Many of us are becoming increasingly discriminating, making finer and finer distinctions in what we allow in our body and environment.
The quality of our food has soared in most places around the world, our expectations of what we choose to put in our mouth are consistently rising.
Almost everywhere, more people are becoming more refined in their bodies and minds, healthier, keeping their senses clear, and thus able to experience higher levels of pleasure.
More sophisticated, open sexual practices are becoming more prevalent and accepted.
Beyond that, healthy, fit people are consistently taking pleasure in their bodies and exertions.
Our aesthetic senses are becoming far more refined, leading to what I have described as ‘expectations of beauty’ for everything around us.
Thus, design and art are becoming more central to our society, as we demand the pleasure of inspired, sophisticated form, colour, and concepts.
At Future of Sex we have written extensively about technologies such as orgasm amplification, implants for instant orgasms, shared orgasms, orgasm replays, direct pleasure center stimulation, crowd orgasms, and more.
We have no timeline on the development of effective pleasure amplification technologies, but it is reasonable to assume we will get there.
Of course, if pleasure amplification comes to pass, it can also be applied to experiences other than sex, such as watching a stunning sunset or eating a wonderful meal.
The so-called ‘God Helmet’ generates mystical, religious experiences by applying low intensity magnetic fields to the brain. Religious ecstasy is arguably the most refined ecstasy.
Potentially we can synthesize entirely new pleasures, perhaps by combining sexual and other pleasures into the one experience.
As our knowledge of neuroscience extends beyond the trivial and we develop new technologies, we may uncover capacities for pleasure in our brains that few or no-one has ever reached before.
The quest for money seems to be endless, defining much of human society. If we are able to enhance our pleasure far beyond anything we’ve experience before, will our quest for pleasure also be endless?
Rats who were given a lever to directly stimulate their pleasure centres would not leave it, ultimately starving unless the machine was turned off.
If we can give ourselves pleasure on demand, what happens to society, work, and relationships?
I’m optimistic. I believe that the deepest, strongest pleasures are of engaging deeply in life, and while some may get lost on the way, we will discover richer, more subtle pleasures in art, creativity, sensuality of all kinds, and our human relationships, sexual and more than sexual.
